


As Its Remembrance Gives You Pleasure

by AMarguerite



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5870542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old fic, from the 2012 MRF “Spring Jumble Sale” challenge, based on the prompt, “There have been rather more Alecs than Bunnys, but that never seems worth saying, neither during the misunderstanding, nor after Laurie comes back.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Its Remembrance Gives You Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> For the MRF “Spring Jumble Sale” challenge. I ended up using two prompts. I used the first one a little, as in, the Pevensies made me think of C.S. Lewis, and I also borrowed the phrase, “Some overwrought novel by du Maurier had called it the saddest word in the English language.” This fic was mostly inspired by the sixth prompt, however: “There have been rather more Alecs than Bunnys, but that never seems worth saying, neither during the misunderstanding, nor after Laurie comes back.”

Each time Spud takes the train from Oxford to Bristow, Ralph always thinks of it as Spud coming home. Homecomings, in turn, stir half forgotten memories of schoolwork, like an autumn breeze ruffling through the pages of an abandoned book, left carelessly open and unfinished. Today, for some reason, this reminds him of Bim, hard, bright and shining, like the light of an oil lamp spluttering out in too little fuel, with his mocking “the Odell?” and quips about romantic Odysseys. 

However, Ralph does not like to think of Bim or anyone else in that precious moment when he sees Spud and Spud does not yet see him. Ralph also does not particularly like to think of himself as a romantic, since Alec used to tease him past endurance about it, but the pure surge of joy he feels at seeing the sun glancing off Spud’s hair, turning it to copper, at Spud’s slightly abstracted look, as if he has just been pulled out of a boy’s adventure book when it had just been getting to a shipwreck or a shark attack, often makes him think Alec is right. There are only so many defenses the past could hammer into one; the bright hope of the future always melted them all away.

“Hallo Spud,” Ralph says, as Spud limps off the train.

Spud’s expression is transformed instantly, into one of naked delight. “Ralph! There you are.”

“Let me take your case. How was the trip? No, give it here before you bang your knee with it like last time.”

“Yes, Lanyon, please,” Spud replies, with the hint of schoolboy innocence he has never really managed to shed. 

Ralph is surprised into a smile. “It is good to see you Spuddy. The car’s just round the corner.”

Spud is full of happy, mild commonplaces about Oxford life. He has a friend at Magdalene College with a tutor who keeps doing radio broadcasts about Christianity. Said tutor had had a long talk with Spud about Celtic paganism, and then, after the expected detour into Christianity, the tutor’s theories on the four Greek words for love. Spud rushes through that, as if unsure what, if anything Ralph remembers about Greek vocabulary, or if the discussion of Oxford makes Ralph think of the missed opportunities of Cambridge.

The temptation to look into the past and to try and imagine it differently always winds itself sinuously through Ralph’s thoughts when Spud talks about his essays and classes.  _If_ Ralph hadn’t gone for Hazell,  _if_ he had just kept his head down and ploughed on to his entrance exams—but if Ralph had, he would have gone on to Cambridge and the unmapped patches of the globe, and Spud to Oxford and God knows where and they might never have met again. But  _if,_ insists the part of his brain that was forever pulling him back into the past,  _if_ he had told Spud he liked him when they were schoolboys—well, they had built so much on ten minutes of conversation in the prefects study, enough to last through a war, then who was to say—

Ralph shakes his head, half to rid himself of the thought, half to dismiss, with Spud, some absurdity of discussing Greek love without any serious inclusion of homosexuality.

The  _if_ still lingers in his mind, however, inviting him to look on the past once more.

If Ralph looked back on the totality of his past, he would see a rough sea, with more patches of smooth sailing than he would have expected. From what Ralph has gathered from guarded conversations with Spud, if Spud looked at Ralph's past, it would be a succession of Hazells and Bunnys causing vicious storms where the ship went down with all hands, with moments of calm in the form of his two years of women and his relationship with Alec.

There have been rather more Alecs than Bunnys, but that never seems worth saying, neither during the misunderstanding, nor after Laurie comes back. Each time Laurie comes back, Ralph thinks of it in a vague way, like craters on the surface of the moon. They are there if one cares to notice, but it never harms one’s enjoyment of what is to ignore the marks of past damage.

Some overwrought novel by du Maurier had called ‘if’ the saddest word in the English language; Ralph had read it in hospital, when he had finished the books Alec had brought him, and it was all he could find. Novels can, however, provide one with a way of mapping out the world.  Though Ralph mostly thinks of Jane Austen as the author of a clever pun about Rears and Vices in the Navy, the Matron at school was forever re-reading  _Pride and Prejudice_ and had offered, “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure” when he was holed up in the sicker before being expelled. It had seemed like offering a bit of gauze to a double amputee at the time, but once Spud had turned to him in the car and said, “You know, I always had this sort of dream where you were leaving school again, and I told you that if you left again, I would come with you.” Then it was as if Jane Austen had tapped him with her quill pen and said, “See, young man?” 

Spud finishes his summary of the differences between _agape_ and _philia_ and lapses into a thoughtful silence.

“All right there, Spuddy?” Ralph asks, glancing over.

“Fine,” Spud says, with a smile that reminds Ralph of victorious swim meets. “I was thinking of how much it meant to me when you gave me  _The Phaedrus._ All right, Ralph?”

“Perfect.”

It is better to focus on the road ahead, mostly smooth, despite the bombings, and the shared horizon before them. 


End file.
